The LAST Night Call ever
The exact post I had on FB, after my last night call on 19 Dec 2013.THIS IS IT.
After so many years of night calls, this is finally the end.
I will never forget, in chronological order:
1) The smell of liquor, the episiotomies, the day I gave my patient 4mg of lorazepam for sleep instead of 4mg of piriton @ NUH O and G
2) I sat down at the nurse’s counter in ward 64 with 10 empty case-notes lying in front for me to clerk @ NUH Med
3) My first collapse: This pat...ient collapsed in front of me in ward 53 when I was catheterizing him @ NUH Med
4) How I finished clerking >20 patients myself when my MO was lazing somewhere @ NUH Med
5) How this reg-on-call made me, the poor HO, run all the way from KRW to Ward 56 to do ECG for a patient with chest pain when he was just standing there waiting @ NUH Med
6) How 2 HOs-on-call (be it same or different gender) have to share one call room (with 2 beds of course) @ NUH Med
7) Doing 8 calls per month, eating at Hongkong street @ AH GS
8) Cross-covering and helping one another when fellow GRM friends were on call together @ AH GRM
9) Sleeping on this yellow mucus-stained mattress in the hot office when doing DMSO (duty medical staff officer) calls @ SAF HQMC
10) My otherwise peaceful first ICU call @ TTSH GM
11) Refusing to use the supposedly-haunted call room in CDC2 @ TTSH GM
12) Doing IMC for X number of male patients in the middle of the night, watch a few episodes of Korean drama @ TTSH Rehab
13) Having 1-in-4 calls in MICU Ward 26 and having morning dim-sums at Holland village post call @ NUH Med
14) The night-float systems, how I hated to walk to-and-fro from Kent ridge wing to main block (see point 5) through the spooky quiet walkway @ NUH Med
15) The thick pile of lab results for me to sign in Ward 44, 47, 56 and CCU @ NHC Cardio
16) Set plug and take blood from minister and VIP @ NHC Cardio
17) Doing HO-MO night call, clerking the first patient in Ward 75 when KTPH first opened @ KTPH GRM
18) The routine Mac breakfasts post-call @ KTPH GRM
19) The first tag-on reg call @ KTPH
20) The first reg call @ KTPH
21) When there was only one reg on call per night and I have to cover medical and cardio patients in tower A/B/MICU/SICU, and I decide when to activate cath lab @ KTPH
22) Walking across level 5 from tower B to tower A, seeing my cute ah gongs and ah mas sleeping soundly (and perhaps not too soundly) in the middle of the night, admiring the clear sky with twinkling stars, knowing the call will eventually end, @ KTPH
23) When the night nursing staff gave us some tidbits and hot milo during the darkest moment of our lives @ NUH/AH/TTSH/NHC/KTPH
24) This 126th and FINAL reg call, , and still deciding if I should intubate this new patient I have admitted @ KTPH Ward 26
Thanks to all the juniors, seniors and fellow healthcare staff whom I have crossed path with and who have helped me along the way.
Thanks to those who gave me bad memories too, for making sure that I did not become the person I hate most.
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